Rae Spoon
}} Rae Spoon is a Canadian musician and writer. Their musical style has varied from country to electronic-influenced indie rock and folk punk.Rae Spoon's Long View. Exclaim!, October 2008. Personal life Spoon grew up as a transgender person in Calgary, Alberta. They were raised in a Pentecostal household to a paranoid-schizophrenic father. Their father's religious beliefs caused anxiety to a teenage Rae. Spoon now lives in Victoria, British Columbia. After a decade of living as a trans man, Spoon noted a preference for the pronoun "they" in 2012 during an interview with cartoonist Elisha Lim, a fellow advocate for the gender-neutral pronoun."Elisha Lim and Rae Spoon: Talking Shop". No More Potlucks, January 2012. They explained to Now Magazine, "after years of fighting to be called 'he,' the idea of coming out again made me tired. But now I feel kind of rejuvenated, ready to fight on some more. I think the 'they' pronoun is a pretty cool thing. It's letting a lot of people not have to identify as a man or a woman. Whatever it means to them.""Rae Spoon: Powerful album reignites the pronoun debate". NOW, January 26, 2012. Career |width = 20% |source = }} Spoon started performing before they started recording. They decided they wanted to become a songwriter while performing at the age of seventeen. See p. 48. They emerged as a country and roots singer. Their early music features country imagery to the sound of acoustic string instruments such as banjo, guitar and mandolin. Spoon has performed with such artists as Annabelle Chvostek, Ember Swift, Kinnie Starr, Melissa Ferrick, The Be Good Tanyas, Bitch & Animal, Natalie Merchant and Earl Scruggs."Rae Spoon offers an affectionate homage to another era". Xtra!, July 7, 2005. They have performed at festivals including North Country Fair, South Country Fair, Under the Volcano Festival, and the Vancouver, Regina, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, Brandon Folk, Music & Art Festival and Winnipeg folk festivals. Spoon's breakthrough album, 2008's Superioryouareinferior, was recorded in Calgary and introduced some electronic music elements into Spoon's style. Superioryouareinferior includes themes previously used by Spoon like Canadian history and culture such as the commentary on colonialism in their song "Come On Forest Fire Burn The Disco Down". Superioryouareinferior was a longlisted nominee for the 2009 Polaris Music Prize."Pop goes Rae Spoon". Exclaim!, September 2010. While touring Europe Spoon met Alexandre Decoupigny in Berlin. Decoupigny and Spoon collaborated in the album Worauf Wartest Du? Decoupigny taught Spoon how to create music with a computer which inspired the musician to further experiment with electronic music. The experimentation with electronic music influenced their subsequent albums and culminated in I Can't Keep All Our Secrets. They have also published First Spring Grass Fire, a book of short stories about growing up in Alberta. Arsenal Pulp Press released the book in the fall of 2012. The book was a nominee for the 2013 Lambda Literary Awards in the Transgender Fiction category,"Rae Spoon, Kamal Al-Solaylee among Canadian Lambda nominees". Quill & Quire, March 6, 2013. and Spoon was awarded an Honour of Distinction from the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBT writers in 2014.Dayne Ogilvie Prize, Writers' Trust of Canada. Spoon has stated that First Spring Grass Fire was written to help them prepare for the production of a National Film Board of Canada documentary about their life and music, My Prairie Home, directed by Chelsea McMullan. The film was released in the fall of 2013. My Prairie Home, the album of music that Spoon composed for the film, was a longlisted nominee for the 2014 Polaris Music Prize."Polaris Music Prize announces 2014 long list" . Aux, June 19, 2014. In 2012, Spoon and Ivan Coyote collaborated on Gender Failure, a touring multimedia show in which both artists performed music and spoken word pieces about their failed attempts at fitting into the gender binary.Richard Burnett, "Queer icons Ivan E. Coyote and Rae Spoon step "out of the box" for Gender Failure Show". The Gazette, November 20, 2012. A book based on the show was published by Arsenal Pulp in 2014."Rae Spoon and Ivan E. Coyote share personal stories in Gender Failure". Quill & Quire, June 20, 2014. In 2014, Spoon composed music for the feature film The Valley Below."Best Original Scores: TIFF tips for music lovers". Now, September 4, 2014. Spoon began the music label Coax Records "out of a love for indie music and as an answer to under representation for many groups in the music industry." The album "Armour" was released on Coax in 2016. Discography * Honking at Minivans (2001) * Throw Some Dirt on Me (2003) * Your Trailer Door (2005) * White Hearse Comes Rolling (2006) * Trucker's Memorial (2006, with Rodney Decroo) * superioryouareinferior (2008) * Worauf wartest du? (2009, with Alexandre Decoupigny) * Love Is a Hunter (2010) * I Can't Keep All of Our Secrets (2012) * My Prairie Home (2013) * Armour (2016) * bodiesofwater (2018) References External links * * Rae Spoon at CBC Radio 3 * Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Canadian country singer-songwriters Category:Canadian folk guitarists Category:Canadian folk singers Category:Canadian singer-songwriters Category:Living people Category:People with non-binary gender identities Category:Canadian indie rock musicians Category:Musicians from Calgary Category:Writers from Calgary Category:Folk punk musicians Category:21st-century Canadian short story writers Category:Musicians from Montreal Category:Writers from Montreal Category:Anglophone Quebec people Category:Canadian film score composers Category:LGBT musicians from Canada Category:LGBT writers from Canada Category:21st-century Canadian singers